AHRQ Ambulatory Safety and Quality Program
Completed June 2012
CLIENT: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
AUDIENCE: Healthcare researchers and ambulatory healthcare facilities and providers
GOALS & OBJECTIVES: The purpose of these videos is to educate the audience about the adoption and implementation of health information technology (IT) by sharing stories about successes that have been achieved. This is a dry and complex topic. Stories are a powerful way to talk about successes because they allow people to relate to programs on a personal level and imagine themselves achieving similar goals.
The adoption and implementation of health IT has the potential to transform and improve healthcare throughout the United States. This is a huge job, which has been compared in scope to construction of the interstate highway system, and billions of dollars in federal money are supporting the health IT effort. These two videos are part of a program to share exemplary stories of how research efforts are advancing health IT. The Logan video highlights a pilot research project that created and evaluated a quality measurement program based on electronic medical records used by gastroenterologists in ambulatory care facilities. The Kaushal video highlights a project to develop and test a method to use data from electronic health records to measure quality of care.
Video: AHRQ ASQ Exemplary Stories: Dr. Judith Logan 
Video: AHRQ ASQ Exemplary Stories: Dr. Rainu Kaushal
The Community Guide
Completed March 2012
CLIENT: The Community Guide Task Force and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
AUDIENCE: State, territorial, local, and tribal health department staff and other potential users of the Guide to Community Preventive Services (Community Guide)
GOALS & OBJECTIVES: The purpose of these videos is to educate the audience about the potential of the Community Guide and inspire use of the Guide by sharing stories of how it has already been used to support successful public health initiatives.
The Community Guide is a curated source of data whose purpose is to provide evidence-based information and resources to support public health initiatives. The goal of these videos is to inspire greater use of the Community Guide by showing how effective it can be in various settings and addressing a variety of public health issues. Success stories in two communities are highlighted. In South Carolina, Myra Pinckney, Case Manager/Outreach Coordinator at the St. James-Santee Family Health Center, used the Guide to justify a grant application that funded the Black Corals health education project and then implemented recommendations in the Guide to develop a successful social marketing outreach campaign that addressed breast and cervical cancer education for underserved women in South Carolina. In North Carolina, Jackie Sergent, health education supervisor at the Granville-Vance District Health Department, used the Guide for inspiration on how to address a problem with chronic disease and obesity in the community, proposed the built environment solutions, and coordinated the efforts of the many people who embraced the idea, built upon it, and have helped it succeed.